Many have detoured from life’s freeway for a time, passing their days at Aliso Creek as they gather the cash and initiative to get their acts back on the road again. The Kaempffes illustrate the plight of a number of families who call Aliso Creek home. It’s certainly better than parking on any city street.” “It’s a good place with a nice ocean breeze,” he said. He stood up on a nearby picnic table and pointed toward the ocean. “It sure as hell beats paying $35 a day staying at some campground,” said Kaempffe, 46, dressed in a wide-brimmed straw hat and blue jeans, as he collected bottles and cans around the site to earn extra cash. Their 9-year-old son, Omar, plays in the grassy rest area, climbing trees, meeting other children from around the world, or just talking with other rest stop regulars-including the old man who has taught him the history of surrounding Camp Pendleton.įor the Kaempffes, the stay is a matter of economics. The out-of-work construction worker from Texas has camped out at Aliso Creek for the last four months with his wife and two children.īy day, as he points the family’s late-model station wagon toward San Diego in search of work, his wife stays behind in their cramped camper. But it sure scares the hell out of me.”ĭespite all the bad-news stories, however, Aliso Creek continues to serve as a safe harbor for people like Bert Kaempffe. Some people might think it’s a safe environment, a nice place to stop for lunch. “The crime up there is incredible-murder, rapes, car theft, assaults, drug sales, homosexual activity, prostitution. We’d all like to see it close down,” said CHP Officer Brian Ward, whose patrols include Aliso Creek. “I don’t really know what its purpose is, but I’ll tell you one thing-it’s a headache for everybody, even the Marine Corps. Sometimes, during the rare slow moments, they also check the supposedly nonprofit vendors who hawk their wares at Aliso Creek 24 hours a day-some without proper permits. Undercover San Diego County sheriff’s deputies often patrol the restrooms and back bushes, where they say homosexual activity routinely takes place.Īnd after an incident four years ago in which a woman’s dismembered body was found strewn about a dumpster and nearby ravine, the California Highway Patrol has also kept a closer eye on the rest stop. They’re also smuggling drugs through that place, right under the noses of the tourists who stop there.”īorder Patrol agents aren’t the only ones nervously watching Aliso Creek. “It’s the place where aliens and their smugglers and scouts can almost sit and watch our operation at (the checkpoint). “We definitely see it as a problem area,” said Ted Swofford, a spokesman for the U.S. Border Patrol officials say the area-about a dozen miles south of the San Onofre immigration checkpoint-serves as a hide-out for hundreds of undocumented aliens who each day await their chance to sneak north past the checkpoint.Ĭoyotes-or alien smugglers-routinely drop off scores of aliens at a time: anxious families who remain at the rest stop, sleeping out in the open, or in nearby bushes and ravines, until a scout returns with word that the coast is clear. State officials whose agencies patrol the rest stop, however, say the name Aliso Creek spells nothing but trouble, and many would like to see it closed for good. “It’s a microcosm of our culture, a real good cross-section of the social strata as it exists today.” “This is the place where society meets,” said Tom Ham, a Caltrans landscape architect who supervises roadside design and improvements. To them, it’s known as the freakiest sideshow of Southern California’s hectic freeway culture-the rest stop that never sleeps. State transportation officials say the rest area-with sections on both sides of the freeway-provides a valuable service to the throngs of travelers motoring between Los Angeles and San Diego.īut for the cops, preachers, illegal aliens, scroungers and down-and-outers who regularly pass through there, Aliso Creek has become something more. That’s more than four times the number of people who visited Sea World in 1989 or about as many tourists as pack into crowded Disneyland each year. For others-those among the growing number of full-time rest stop residents hunkered down in cars, converted old buses and campers-the time spent there can drag on for months, even years.Įach year, an estimated 16.6 million travelers find roadside refuge at Aliso Creek, a few shady acres along I-5, where it snakes through the desolate confines of the Pendleton Marine base. By dark, the bumper-to-bumper jam of vehicles converging on the busy little spot had queued up clear to the adjacent freeway.įor many, the stay at Aliso Creek would last 15 minutes or less. And there were lines everywhere-not only at the restrooms but at the few public telephone booths and drinking fountains.
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